


Cut

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Drinking, Developing Relationship, Haircuts, Implied Sexual Content, Inline with canon, Language Barrier, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Nicknames, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25365847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "'A haircut,' he blurts. 'You want me to cut your hair?' Kurogane looks at the weight of Fai’s hair brushing his shoulders and compares it to his memory of soft waves framing his face when they first met at the witch’s shop. 'It is getting kind of long, I guess.'" Kurogane cuts Fai's hair for him, and then he doesn't.
Relationships: Fay D. Fluorite/Kurogane
Comments: 20
Kudos: 56





	1. Some Slack

Fai is harder to bear in silence.

Kurogane would have expected the opposite. There is hardly meaning to the other’s words even when he can understand the greater part of them, no more than fragments of truth beneath the blinding excess of that brilliant smile; better, then, to strip away even the illusion of comprehension, to free Kurogane from the need to pay attention so he can pick out the glimpses of reality from the theatricality that Fai has made of himself, his existence, his whole presentation. Kurogane would have expected to find it a relief to lose whatever magical understanding fits Fai’s speech to his ear; at least he could take a breath to himself, if nothing else.

There is no relief. Fai is near-silent during the day, when his incomprehensibility draws frowns instead of the friendship that their continued survival in Yama requires; but his unusual quiet seems to hold Kurogane’s attention closer to him, as if some part of Kurogane’s awareness is sure Fai will simply vanish without the constant patter of speech to hold him to reality. As the days pass Kurogane finds himself sitting closer to Fai’s side, letting his hand fall to pin a corner of the other’s sleeve beneath it just so he can have the tactile proof of his companion’s presence and not be constantly glancing to make sure that polished smile and those clear eyes are still in silent attendance. The days are stressful, as Kurogane fumbles himself into a modicum of understanding with their not-quite-captors and tries to keep hold of Fai short of actually clasping a hand around his wrist and simply holding him to the present moment; and the nights are no better.

Fai speaks constantly in the evenings, as if the hours of self-imposed silence in the daylight are priced at the expense of all peace Kurogane might hope for in the hours before the restful dark of sleep. Kurogane understands not a word of it, except for those rare occasions when the name of one of their lost companions slips past Fai’s lips to catch his focus; but he listens, his attention helplessly drawn to the birdsong sweet of Fai’s voice even absent meaning for the speech that tumbles past his lips. It could be nonsense, could be stories, could be nothing but the endless narrative of some false history or just the mundanity of stream-of-consciousness, but with no means to judge the meaning Kurogane is left with only the sound pouring over him like the ripple of a stream. Fai has a beautiful voice, clear and lilting as if in song no matter how inane his subject, and as the days pass out of easy counting Kurogane finds himself lulled by the sound of it, soothed into a comfort so all-consuming he can feel it reaching into the core of his existence, winding tendrils of affection around him that threaten to steal all the happiness from any future that lacks this simple companionship.

Kurogane doesn’t ask Fai to stop. He has few words and less will for it, even as his life takes on the shape of familiarity, as the structure of his days finds a rhythm that fits itself to the beat of his heart in his chest and the ripple of Fai’s voice as a nightly lullaby. He just listens, content even as he feels himself falling, as every night digs a deeper need into him for the next, and the next, for a lifetime framed around the sound of that voice and the shape of that smile.

Fai never asks for a response. He glances to Kurogane, sometimes, tilting his head and flashing his smile like he’s asking for a laugh, or sharing some joke as much for his own pleasure as for Kurogane’s. But there is never a pause in the rhythm of his speech, never a need to fill the gap of a pointed silence, and Kurogane has learned quiet as Fai has spilled speech, has contented himself with the struggle for language with their present countrymen and fallen to comfortable silence with his companion. As far as Kurogane knows Fai could be speaking to anyone, could be talking to himself; there is no particular indication that he is even aware Kurogane is listening, much less that he expects a reply. His speech is for himself as much as a bird’s song is its own, and Kurogane is content to lean back against the wall of their shared dwelling and shut his eyes to the meaningless music.

“Kuro-chan.”

Kurogane jerks to attention. He wouldn’t have described himself as asleep, exactly, but his focus was far distant, lost somewhere in the last unmeasured span of time since he settled himself against the support at his back and let his thoughts drift wide across the open space of possibility. The sound of his name—even Fai’s variation on it—is so unexpected that it jolts him back to the present with as much force as if it had been a blow instead of a simple summons.

Fai is beaming at him when Kurogane looks up, the full-face smile that crinkles his eyes and glows at his cheeks. He launches back into speech as soon as Kurogane makes eye contact, resuming the patter of the usual one-sided conversation he sustains through the evenings, but this time the words have a focus to them that makes it clear Kurogane is meant as a participant instead of simply a subject. Fai is waving his hands, gesturing around his head and shoulders in a way that is clearly meant to convey meaning, but in the first surprise of being directly addressed Kurogane can’t make the slightest guess as to what that meaning actually is. He stares at Fai, feeling the stream of the other’s words rising to a wave to drown him, until when Fai finally comes to a halt and looks up at him expectantly Kurogane feels his shoulders start to hunch in totally unwarranted defensiveness.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Kurogane says, the same way he did every few hours the first day, when Fai kept glancing sideways at him and smiling like the murmur of his words was a secret he was offering to be shared. It’s been weeks since Fai expected any kind of successful communication from anything other than basic gestures, and Kurogane finds himself caught off-guard by the sudden obvious expectation in the blue eyes fixed on him. “What do you want from me, Fai?”

Fai smiles at him and offers a burble of speech that sounds very pretty and carries no meaning to Kurogane at all. Kurogane shakes his head uncomprehendingly and Fai twists his mouth into a pout before looking up thoughtfully. Kurogane watches him, waiting for some kind of understanding to form as Fai pushes a hand through his hair and then back up, catching at a handful of the golden waves falling around his shoulders; and then he blinks, and realizes that Fai’s gesture is more meaningful than he first took it to be. He’s holding a lock of his hair out from where it’s curling at his shoulder, and lifting his other hand to gesture an obvious motion across it, and Kurogane realizes what he’s asking for.

“A haircut,” he blurts. “You want me to cut your hair?” Fai doesn’t understand him any more than Kurogane can make sense of the other’s words, but he drops his hands to his lap anyway and beams as if he can sense Kurogane’s understanding. Kurogane looks at the weight of Fai’s hair brushing his shoulders. “It is getting kind of long, I guess.”

Fai pushes his hand through his hair again, coupling the gesture with another spill of words before wrinkling his nose and shaking his head in an expression far more clear than his speech. Kurogane snorts a laugh and shrugs when Fai pushes his hair back to look at him.

“I can try,” he says, and tips forward from the wall he’s leaning against so he can come across the floor to where Fai is. “I’m not making any promises about how it comes out, though.”

Fai catches at Kurogane’s wrist as the other approaches and uses the contact to pull himself to his feet. Kurogane is startled by how light he is, as he always is; sometimes it seems there must be nothing to Fai at all, for how little the weight of the world seems to affect him. Fai smiles at Kurogane, his eyes crinkling and hair tumbling into his face, before he lets go of his hold on the other’s arm to point to the front door and issue what is audibly a command followed with a “Kuro-tan.”

Kurogane sighs. “I’d tell you not to call me those stupid nicknames but you’d just pretend you can’t understand me, wouldn’t you?” He steps past Fai to make his way out the door and to the low step that makes up the front porch. He settles himself at the far end of it, where the edge extends over hard-packed dirt, and a moment later Fai follows with a pair of bright-polished shears. He hands these over to Kurogane before folding smoothly to kneel at the edge of the step in front of the other and pushing a hand through his hair again as he shakes his head to free the waves from whatever tangles the breeze has ruffled into them.

“Okay,” Kurogane says, feeling a little lost now that the task to which he has agreed is actually in front of him. He reaches out to touch against the wave of Fai’s hair, feeling unwarrantedly self-conscious, but Fai doesn’t flinch away, just sits deliberately still with his hands folded in his lap and that bright smile still curving at his mouth. Kurogane looks at him for a minute, working a frown against his own lips, before turning his attention away from blue eyes and onto gold hair. He reaches back in memory, rifling through the weeks and months that have slipped him into comfortable familiarity until he can call up the recollection of looking at a stranger bearing winter-heavy clothes and an incomprehensible wish within his slim frame. Blue eyes, lips curving onto a show of insincerity; and yellow hair falling in a tumble around his ears and over the back of his neck.

Kurogane draws his fingers along a lock of hair to gauge the length he needs to take off. “This much?” Fai lifts a hand to wave away the question with another laughing response, and Kurogane heaves a sigh.

“Fine,” he says. “Just don’t complain about how it comes out.” And he brings up the shears to cut through the pale lock.

Kurogane is half-expecting Fai to exclaim in alarm, whether sincere or feigned, as soon as the first step is irretrievably taken. But Fai doesn’t turn his head and doesn’t speak, just smiles and shuts his eyes, and Kurogane is left to take on the task in front of him in silence but for the soft sound of the shears and the whisper of his fingers drawing through Fai’s hair.

It’s a peaceful task. Kurogane is more than familiar with the wielding of a blade, or a knife, or any other variety of weapon that may have occasion to find his hold, but this is a kind of domestic simplicity he has had very little of even after their arrival in Yama. There is a rhythm to his movement, to the draw of one hand through Fai’s wavy hair and the motion of the other to cut the locks away from the nape of the other’s neck, and Kurogane finds himself moving while his thoughts wander, his hands continuing their steady progress through Fai’s hair as his attention lingers on the slide of the strands against his touch, and the heat of Fai’s skin kissing at his fingers, and the whisper of something sweet at Fai’s clothes, or hair, or maybe just the warmth of his skin itself. Fai is turned away, his back to Kurogane and his gaze facing out rather than in, and in the freedom from his attention Kurogane’s focus lingers against the angle of Fai’s shoulders, and the silk-soft of his hair, and the loose weight of his clothes dipping wide against the back of his neck. Kurogane can see the pale of his skin as he cuts Fai’s hair up and away from the waves brushing his shoulders, yellow curls giving way to the curve of fabric and an arc of white skin at the back of Fai’s neck.

Kurogane’s gaze lingers longer than it ought to, there, against the back of Fai’s bowed head and trailing against the curve of his neck down to his shoulders. Fai’s hair is curling light with the loss of the weight that has draped around his shoulders; in its absence Kurogane can see the pattern of vertebrae under Fai’s skin, can trace one to the next down the line of the other’s spine. He can smell the warm sweet of Fai’s skin against the dark weight of the night around them, can see the delicate soft of the fine hair at the very back of his neck laid bare by the work of the shears in Kurogane’s hand. Kurogane wants to lean forward, to cross the few breaths of distance between them, to cover the vulnerable curve of Fai’s neck with the touch of his mouth and the warmth of his lips. He wants to hear the sound Fai would make in his throat, something soft and hot and not really all that surprised, in the end, wants to kiss along the column of Fai’s pale throat and up the angle of his jaw until he can press his mouth against the curve of that too-knowing smile and melt it down into something too immediate to have any feigning at all. Kurogane looks at the back of Fai’s neck, and he thinks about what he wants to do; and then he lets a breath go, and he reaches for another lock of Fai’s hair to continue on.

Kurogane doesn’t know how long they spend there, sitting together on the front step of their temporary home with Fai’s patter of speech smoothed to quiet and Kurogane’s fingers sliding gently though the silky gold of Fai’s hair. Fai’s silence pulls the rhythm of time back away from them and leaves Kurogane lingering in the moment, caught in the immediate focus of cutting Fai’s hair while some greater part of him is lost in the soft of the strands tangling against his fingers, the heat of Fai’s body, the pale of his skin. Kurogane’s hands continue their work, dedicated to the task he has undertaken; but his gaze strays, following the wave of gold down to the curve of Fai’s throat, drawing against the dip to Fai’s half-bared shoulder while he feels the pressure of desire ache a familiar knot in his chest and against his throat. Fai stays still, head turned away and body relaxed into easy trust, and Kurogane looks, and wants, and keeps to the path Fai set him.

It cannot last forever. There is a peace to the moment, a contentment even as affection aches unvoiced through each beat of Kurogane’s heart; but Kurogane is too efficient to draw the effort out, and after some too-short eternity he is snipping through the last strands of Fai’s hair and rocking back to draw his hand through the waves tumbling around the other’s face to check their fall. He can see no mistakes, can find no longer strands catching around the pull of his hand, but he only has a moment to consider before Fai lifts his own hand from his side to ruffle his fingers through his hair. Kurogane pulls back, retreating from the contact before Fai’s wrist can make contact with his own, and Fai tips himself back to give Kurogane a smile over the line of his shoulder.

“That’s the best I can do,” Kurogane says as he sets the shears aside and frowns in reply to the bright show of ease carried at Fai’s lips. Kurogane doesn’t feel easy; his fingers feel shaky, his chest is tight, and the loss of that silent closeness aches with such a keen edge that it hardens his voice to rough steel. “You’ll have to find someone else if you want better.”

Fai laughs for all the world as if he understands Kurogane’s words and drops his hand from his hair to reach out instead. Kurogane doesn’t pull away or look aside, and so it is that he’s looking right at Fai’s smile when the fingers brush against the set line of his jaw.

Fai says something, his voice so soft with gratitude that Kurogane understands the thanks even without the “Kuro-rin,” that lilts in its wake. His fingers shift against Kurogane’s face, his gaze dips to follow their motion, and for a moment Kurogane is left to look unseen at Fai as the other’s smile softens, as his attention follows his fingers at Kurogane’s skin and his gaze finishes their stalled-out motion. Fai’s lashes dip, his head tips fractionally to the side, and for a moment the possibility in his touch is so clear that Kurogane can almost feel Fai’s lips against his, can almost taste Fai’s mouth closing the distance between them. Kurogane draws a breath, feels his heart thundering in his chest; and then Fai’s gaze leaps back up to his, and the illusion of a kiss dissolves into the flash of another blinding smile. Fai beams at Kurogane, his palm pressing close to the other’s face, and then he’s rising to his feet in a single smooth motion and moving away and out of reach before Kurogane can lift a hand to catch him still.

Kurogane tips his head to watch Fai go. Fai keeps his head ducked down as he makes his way across the step to the door inside; it’s only as he’s touching a hand to the doorway to steady himself that he glances back at Kurogane sitting at the edge of the step. There is no smile on his face this time; Kurogane thinks maybe Fai didn’t expect him to be watching, didn’t expect to have anyone to see the soft weight of consideration against his mouth. He doesn’t flinch when he meets Kurogane’s stare; they just gaze at each other for a moment, Kurogane in the shadows and Fai’s hair limned in golden light. Then Fai turns away, and steps inside without saying anything at all, and Kurogane lets his shoulders fall back to rest against the corner of the house and shuts his eyes to let the quiet wash over him.


	2. To the Quick

Fai’s hair is getting longer.

Kurogane has been paying attention as it grows. That night in Yama was the turning point, when a distant awareness became intense focus, and somewhere between the first evening Fai tumbled his fingers through the weight of his hair and smiled at Kurogane and the second Kurogane found greater opportunity to appreciate Fai’s hair than during the brief interlude of cutting it. Kurogane has had months to learn the fit of his fingers against the golden waves, to press the shape of his palms to Fai’s head to steady him, or maybe to brace Kurogane himself for the lingering contact of lips that speak better than their words can manage. Even after their reunion with Syaoran and Sakura and the all-important Mokona, the addition of words left hardly a ripple on a relationship that has slipped sideways from traveling companion into something more, at least in the shadows of the nights the rest of their party sleeps through. Kurogane has memorized the weight of Fai’s growing hair, has trailed his fingers through its spill across the tangle of bedsheets shared beneath them, and has wondered when the next request might come.

It doesn’t. Instead there is another kind of demand, one Fai puts to words and Kurogane refuses with a selfishness so immediate he cannot gain clarity for the stomach-dropping horror that strikes him at the thought of losing Fai, too, after everything else they give up in Tokyo. Whatever Kurogane has done for Fai before he cannot give in to the demand to let him die; and the next time Fai meets his gaze with the one blue eye he still has remaining, there is a wall there that Kurogane doesn’t need the sound of his full name to understand.

They still find a routine. Something—many things—are broken, for the two of them and for all, the dynamic of their group shattered far more effectively than their separation in Yama and Shura could have effected. But Fai continues, persisting onward even as his smile hardens to a steel wall and his hair grows long against the back of his neck, and when Kurogane drags a blade across his skin and offers the slow seep of his blood Fai looks at him with a razor edge on his smile and ice in the blue of his eye, and he ducks his head to give Kurogane the perfunctory contact of lips to skin that is all he permits, now.

Kurogane still watches him. During the day, yes, in the endless uphill struggle of their battles on the Infinity playing field and out of the corner of his eye in the evenings, when Fai fits himself into a corner and closes his mouth to the silence that rings loud as a shout in a room full with the five of them; but especially in the moments of necessary intimacy like this one, when Fai’s head is ducked forward over Kurogane’s arm and the grip of his hand and the press of his mouth form a brace to pin Kurogane still for the effort of Fai’s throat working on deliberate swallows. Kurogane can’t see Fai’s eye like this, can hardly even see the dark line of the eyepatch cutting through the weight of his hair; the gold is too dense, the waves of yellow too heavy as they fall forward to curtain Fai’s face as he drinks. All he can see is the angle of Fai’s shoulders, and the spill of his hair, and the very back of his neck, where the solid weight of the collar he wears binds the slim column of his throat.

Fai shifts, his lips sliding against Kurogane’s arm as he tips his head to toss his hair back out of his face. It’s a futile cause, Kurogane can see, and a moment after Fai huffs frustration that pours hot over Kurogane’s wrist and lifts his hand to push his hair back from his face. A few strands stick, clinging to the red that bleeds across Fai’s lips, and Fai lifts his head from Kurogane’s arm entirely to struggle one-handed with his hair.

Kurogane doesn’t think. “Here,” he says, and lifts his free hand to offer the assistance Fai clearly needs. “I can—”

Fai moves like a whip, with a speed that Kurogane glimpsed before Tokyo but that has been everpresent since their arrival in Infinity. His hand swings up and out, the back of his wrist catching sharply against the inside of Kurogane’s reaching hand. Kurogane’s arm is knocked sharply aside, the blow granted far more strength than what Fai ever mustered in Yama, and while he’s still blinking in the first shock Fai lifts his chin to toss his hair back from his face with all the self-assurance of royalty.

“I don’t need your  _ help_,” he says, snapping his voice into the lashing bite of a blow. His mouth is red with Kurogane’s blood; for a moment he looks raw and vicious, even the white of his smile stained crimson with the necessity Kurogane’s choice has imposed on him. Kurogane looks at him, meeting the brilliant edge of Fai’s gaze with the steady weight of his own, and after a very brief moment Fai dips his head forward and drops his hair to curtain his face as he lifts his free hand to shadow the curve of his mouth. There is a pause while he presses his tongue to his lips to catch the smear of blood that has colored them to such shadow, and when he lifts his hand away to reach for the loose weight of his hair his lips are clean and his mouth is pressed into a tight line once again.

Kurogane watches Fai’s face, gazing at the deliberate lack of expression on the other’s features as he pushes his hand through his hair to drag it back against his neck. Fai keeps his attention down and his expression perfectly neutral, as if there is no emotion that accompanies the implicit rejection of his movement, but there is tension in his arm, the tendons drawn to straining effort under the pale skin of his wrist, and when his fingers clench at his hair they form an ungentle fist in the tangle of gold. Fai’s knuckles flex, tightening to the white of pressure before he ducks in again to catch the trickle of Kurogane’s blood with the perfunctory press of his tongue to the other’s wrist.

Kurogane doesn’t move to touch Fai again. He stands still, one arm slack at his side and the other held out in the clenching hold of Fai’s fingers, and as Fai’s mouth eases its tension to press closer to the necessity of his blood he lifts his gaze to look away too, to fix his attention on the far side of the room rather than on the icy strain in Fai’s fingers and shoulders. They linger in complete silence, without so much as the huff of a sigh to disrupt them, until Fai’s hold on Kurogane’s arm tightens in premonition of him lifting his head back. He keeps his hold while he licks against his mouth to sweep away the traces of color at lips and tongue, and when he leans back down it is with his mouth clean so the swipe of his tongue against Kurogane’s sluggishly bleeding wrist is cool and quick. The blood comes away, the minor wound begins to knit itself closed, and Fai is dropping Kurogane’s arm and turning away even before the skin has finished mending itself.

Kurogane wants to lift his arm in front of him, wants to catch his wrist with his other hand and press the print of Fai’s lips to his skin, to hoard this intimacy that is the most he gets from Fai now, that he is afraid may be the most he may ever get again. He doesn’t. He leaves both his hands heavy at his sides, slack as if Fai has bled the strength from his veins more than the minimal offering of blood Kurogane has made, and when he speaks it is with no motion at all to threaten action for the words. “Do you need another haircut?”

Fai turns away, angling his shoulders so Kurogane can hardly see his face even before he loosens his grip on his hair so he can push his fingers through the tangle of the strands. “No,” he says, dragging a knot loose with rough haste. “I’ll just tie it back.” He’s suiting actions to words now that he has both hands free, pulling his hair back and together before separating out one longer lock to wrap around the rest. He makes quick work of the process, and then he’s letting his hands fall from the short ponytail he’s made and tipping his head back towards Kurogane. It would have been a glance over his shoulder, before; now it’s a flicker of his black eyepatch without any of the connection that would come with eye contact.

“There,” Fai says. “Problem solved.”

Kurogane’s throat is tight, his chest is aching. He has to fight to win his voice back from the pressure against him. “Fai—”

“Thanks for the meal,” Fai says, speaking over Kurogane’s hard-won speech like he doesn’t hear it at all. He turns back a little farther, enough for Kurogane to glimpse the blue of his right eye before Fai manifests one of his over-bright smiles, the ones that fill his face and shut his eye and sweep away any truth from his expression. “I appreciate it, Kurogane.”

Kurogane’s jaw flexes over the impact of that formal politeness, but Fai doesn’t wait to see or hear his reaction. He turns away, moving sharply enough to flick his ponytail against the back of his neck before he strides out of the room. Kurogane watches him, forehead creased and mouth frowning, and he doesn’t realize his empty hand has sought out his wrist as the closest thing to Fai he can be allowed to hold.


	3. From the Same Cloth

It’s strange to be missing an arm.

Kurogane will grow accustomed to it in time. There is very little in his life that has not given way to the unavoidable weight of minutes passing to draw him into the future, and even something as traumatic as the loss of a limb will become no more than ordinary with enough time to ease it into the habit of everyday. Time has brought Kurogane into accommodation with the loss of his home, of his life, even of his parents; in that context giving up a limb is almost trivial, when it came as his own choice instead of one imposed upon him.

And, of course, there is the fact that he would have happily sacrificed far more, if the exchange would let him keep one of the the very few things he has come to realize he cannot live without.

Fai stirs against his shoulder, his body curving into a long line of elegance as he stretches through the the languid weight of pleasure wrapping them both. When he turns his head at Kurogane’s shoulder his hair catches at the sheets tangled around them to slide a lock free from the tie that holds it against the back of his neck. “I thought you were asleep, Kuro-tan.”

Kurogane shuts his eyes and breathes in the sound of the nickname, the shape of affection returned to the syllables of his name tumbling from Fai’s lips. His mouth tightens towards a smile that doesn’t extend far enough to break over his face, but the warmth of it lingers in his chest and purrs under his voice when he replies. “I was thinking.”

Fai hums a musical note at the back of his throat and turns his head to find Kurogane’s shoulder with the touch of his lips. There is a distant ache from earlier, when the slide of his teeth into the pulse of Kurogane’s heartbeat had proven the last impulse to draw a groan from Kurogane’s chest and spill him over the edge of pleasure, but with their joint desires sated Fai does no more than fit a kiss to Kurogane’s skin. Kurogane tips his head to the side, letting the pillow beneath him take its weight as he offers his skin to Fai’s lips, and Fai takes the invitation to kiss against the side of Kurogane’s neck, following the flex of muscle from shoulder up the side of his throat until his lips touch the delicate skin just beneath Kurogane’s ear. When he speaks his voice lilts over the words to make music of the question. “What about?”

Kurogane lifts his arm from its heavy weight at the bed so he can slide his hand across the dip of Fai’s back and fit slim waist to the angle of his elbow. “You.” Fai hums pleasure, his body shifting to curve to welcome as his knee fits between Kurogane’s thighs and his mouth clings close to Kurogane’s throat, and Kurogane braces them together with the spread of his fingers at Fai’s waist and the flex of his arm steadying Fai half-atop him. Fai’s hand slides over Kurogane’s chest, his fingers tracing wandering paths along the bottom edge of the bandage binding Kurogane’s self-inflicted injury, and Kurogane shuts his eyes as the drag of Fai’s touch uncurls the heat of magic into his veins. Fai lifts his mouth from Kurogane’s skin and turns his head to pillow against the other’s shoulder, and as the loose lock of his hair falls forward Kurogane tips his head to look at the pale wave curling at Fai’s skin.

“Your hair’s getting long,” he observes. Fai is draped over him, their bodies lingering in the shared heat of an intimacy so recent the flush of it still clings to Fai’s cheeks, to Kurogane’s breathing; but it still takes a surge of courage for Kurogane to raise his hand from Fai’s waist and reach to catch at the lock trailing loose across the other’s shoulder. His heart remembers Fai’s flinch the last time he reached for him like this, the way the other had recoiled from the weight of Kurogane’s touch against the tumble of his hair; but there is no retreat this time, just soft strands curling at his fingers and Fai humming at the back of his throat as he relaxes further over Kurogane’s shoulder.

“It is,” he says, without any gesture towards further reply in tone or word.

Kurogane presses his fingers to Fai’s hair to smooth it back towards the tie binding the curling weight at the back of his neck. “Do you want to cut it?”

It’s not an offer, not when Kurogane’s only hand is tangling into Fai’s hair without the means to handle a pair of scissors as well. But Fai just hums, and shakes his head, and turns his face in to press against Kurogane’s chest.

“No,” he says. “I think I’ll let it grow out.” He lifts his head from Kurogane’s shoulder, bracing his elbow against the support of the other’s chest so he can catch his chin in his hand and look down through the dark of his lashes at Kurogane beneath him. His mouth catches at the corner to quirk towards a flickering smile. “You don’t have any objections, do you Kuro-sama?”

Kurogane’s mouth pulls on a grin. He slides his fingers back through the weight of Fai’s hair, drawing through the waves to find his way to a hold at the back of the other’s head as he shakes his own.

“No,” he says. “This is perfect.” Fai beams at him, his smile crinkling bright into the corner of his eye, and Kurogane lifts his chin, and winds his fingers into Fai’s hair, and draws Fai in to bring the warmth of the other’s smile down to meet the welcome at his own mouth.


End file.
